Naked
d. Mike Leigh, 1993
I had been waiting to see this film for a while now, since I've heard a lot about it and its director, Mike Leigh. Luckily, I wasn't disappointed by Naked. Except for Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Coppola's The Conversation, this is the best film about social isolation that I've seen.
Its main character, Johnny, spends the movie drifiting from place to place through the London streets. He goes to his old girlfriend's house, hooks up with her friend, leaves, meets some other people, and eventually goes back.
Mike Leigh famously improvises his movies. But from what I've gathered, it's actually a very organized and calculated form of improvisation. Regardless of the form, the film's writing and direction are top-notch here. As is the acting by the whole cast, particular David Thewlis as Naked's protagonist Johnny.
There are many very interesting sequences in the film, all of them revolving around conversation (mostly Johnny's). My favorite is probably the one that takes place in an empty building when a guard lets Johnny in. He goes on to basically speak against everything the guard believes (i.e. by trying to prove that God is bad, the apocalypse is coming, and that evolution pretty much proves everything the guard believes wrong). The way the conversation unfolds as they walk through the building is wonderful, as are most of the scenes in the film.
The film comes full circle in a pretty unexpected way. At the beginning, he was arguing with his closest acquaintance, and he runs away. By the end, he's getting along with her, yet still he runs away. What did it get him?
